school life-part one

Since there’s not anything terribly exciting happening around here lately, I thought I’d take some time to write about what it is that I’m exactly doing here in France. Of course, I’m an English language assistant. But, since one of the reasons that I came here was to find out more about French schools, I might as well share with y’all what my school life is like here. You might know that I only work twelve hours a week. That is to say that I’m in front of students twelve hours a week-like any other teacher, I spend more time than that each week preparing lessons, keeping a log book for future assistants, and surfing the Internet at school. Anyhow, to start, I thought I’d tell you what a typical day looks like for me. So, here’s Tuesday:

Week A
8:30-9:25am Seconde 1
9:25am-10:20am Seconde 2
10:20-10:40am Break
10:40-11:35am Terminale Litt.
1:50pm-2:45pm Seconde 3

Week B
9:25am-10:20am Seconde 2
10:20-10:40am Break
10:40-11:35am Terminale Litt.
1:50pm-2:45pm Seconde 3

Alright. So, obviously, I have two different Tuesday schedules. Classes here use what we would call block scheduling, similar to what we have in college. Students don’t have every class every day-classes usually meet 2-3 times per week. Some classes meet every week, and some every other, which is why I have a slightly different schedule depending if it’s Week A or Week B. The hours are also different from American schools. High school starts at 8:30am and ends at 5:45pm. Beginning in the morning, there are two hours (each class hour lasts 50 minutes). After, there is the morning break, which lasts 20 minutes. Then there are another two class periods, then lunch, which is 12:30pm-1:50pm. This is common in France-most stores close in the middle of the day so that people can go home for lunch. At 1:50pm, afternoon classes start-another two, then a 20-minute break, then another two, and then the day ends. Phew.

It took me a bit to get used to this schedule, and sometimes I still need to reassure myself that it really is Week B and I don’t have to be in class. However, I’m learning to like it, and you certainly won’t find me complaining about all those breaks and long lunches. I also have Mondays off (it doesn’t make sense to spread 12 hours over 5 days…) and Wednesday afternoons as well, since the schools in my town are closed then (I have no idea why.). Another interesting thing that I found out is that full-time teachers only spend 18 hours in front of the students each week (unlike the 25-30 of American teachers). I think they’re just given more time for planning and grading than teachers at home, which I think is awesome. This also means that all of my teachers have at least one other morning or afternoon, or maybe even a whole day, off. I could definitely get used to that schedule.
So, there’s part one of what school is like here. Soon I’ll write about other stuff, like my students and the curriculum, but for my brother’s sake I’m trying to keep things short! ;)